Muriel's sits on a prominent corner of Jackson Square. The rambling old mansion serves a menu with such local items as turtle soup, barbecue shrimp and pecan-crusted drum. Even when the rooms are not festooned with Christmas ribbons and greenery, the restaurant feels festive.

In 2001, when co-owner Rick Gratia first scouted the location, however, the word that popped into his head was probably "forlorn." The ground floor was occupied by a T-shirt shop and an ATM vestibule where drunks liked to lounge. Upstairs, there had been a Chart House restaurant, part of a national chain. But that business closed several years before.

Gratia, whose parents ran Fontana's by the lake, was experienced in the restaurant business. He had been the opening general manager at The Red Fish Grill, another location that was considered cursed until that restaurant proved the naysayers wrong.

Since Muriel's opened, the restaurants around Jackson Square have changed dramatically. National chains have been replaced by locally owned restaurants aimed at more than just tourists.

Scott Boswell first opened Stanley on Sept. 17, 2005, on Decatur Street. It instantly got reams of glowing press. That wasn't too surprising; most of the city flooded after the levees failed a few weeks before. Almost every restaurant remained closed. When Boswell pulled together a menu of burgers and breakfast comfort food, his main competition was an MRE.

From the beginning, however, Stanley was about more than just making do.

The restaurant became a hangout for the squads of reporters covering Katrina's aftermath. Boswell, in one of those early acts of culinary bravado that made our city's chefs leaders in the recovery, showed those reporters that, even after a flood, they could still probably eat better in New Orleans than wherever they came from.

Boswell eventually closed Stanley on Decatur in October 2006 after Stella!, his fine dining restaurant, reopened.

"People had been asking me when we were going to reopen Stanley," Boswell said, "but we got busy with Stella and it was just something in the back of my mind."

One afternoon, though, Boswell missed his turn while driving through the French Quarter. He found himself at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres streets before an empty space across from Muriel's. Before the storm, the location had been an outlet of the La Madeleine chain.

"It was one of the greatest epiphanies I've ever had in my life," he said. "I pulled over and started calling everyone I knew to find out who the landlord was."

The landlord was the state of Louisiana.

In December 2008, Stanley reopened with its menu of burgers, po-boys such as shrimp, oyster and Korean barbecue and a brunch menu served all day. The gleaming, white-tiled space pulses with an energy that starts in the kitchen and extents to the buzzing dining room. No matter how bustling Jackson Square is, there's more activity inside Stanley.

"To put Stanley on the corner where it is now," Boswell said, "probably one of the nicest pieces of real estate in the city, is like a supernova. It exploded from the day we opened the door."

Carmelo Turillo started the La Divina gelato shop on Magazine Street. For the second location, he and his wife Katrina wanted to be in the French Quarter. In 2009, they found a spot on St. Peter Street, a former Haagen-Dazs outlet steps from Jackson Square.

"New Orleans is a funny place," Turillo said. "If there was once an ice cream store there, then for generations after people will be looking for an ice cream store there."

Turillo calls the location the center of the French Quarter.

"We have the Quarter rats, the kids who live down there and busk. You also have Le Petit [Theatre] right there," he said. "There is a market down there, and they're clamoring for high-quality stuff."

Sean McCusker opened Sylvain off Jackson Square in October 2010. It's the kind of place where you might have to squeeze past Jessica Lange to get in the door. It's also the kind of place that, before Sylvain arrived in the French Quarter, would have seemed better suited to Uptown or the Marigny.

Sylvain is a small, intimate bastion of laidback hipness with a modern bistro menu that pays little heed to New Orleans' indigenous cuisine.

"We felt strongly about the Quarter and the fact that it could use a place for locals," McCusker said.

The menu, which includes a shaved Brussels sprouts salad, braised beef cheeks and a special of hand-cut french fries with champagne, could exist in another neighborhood or even another city. The decor, however, could only be found in the French Quarter.

"The best compliment I ever get is when people say it feels like this place has been here 100 years," he said. "The hardest part of designing this was knowing where to stop."

Dickie Brennan's restaurant group debuted Tableau in April of this year. Carved out of Le Petit Theatre, it's a grand Creole restaurant devoted to classics, like steak bordelaise or eggs Hussarde, too rarely seen today.

Steve Pettus, a managing partner of Tableau, sees the project as another manifestation of how local restaurants have pushed back against chains and strictly tourist driven restaurants in the French Quarter.

"You cannot survive without local support," he said.

Locals provide a year-round customer base. After all, they're often the ones to whom travelers turn for recommendations.

"If a local calls for a reservation, they've got it. If you're a local, you're treated as a VIP, because you're our neighbor," Pettus said. "The competition is fierce, and if you're not good, the locals will let you know."

When Itai Ben Eli and his business partner Doris Rebi Chia first visited New Orleans, they immediately noticed that the locals were different.

"We were amazed by the quantity of people who love food," Ben Eli said. "Seriously, this is amazing. You talk to anyone on the street and they all have their opinions."

The pair runs two restaurants in Israel and one in Costa Rica. Their original plan, before visiting New Orleans, was to bring their restaurant Doris Metropolitan to Miami.

In October, they opened their steakhouse, which specializes in dry-aged beef paired with lighter Mediterranean sides. At the corner of Chartres and Wilkinson Streets, where a barker used to lure tourists into The Alpine, there is a now a window displaying hunks of beef. Inside, the space is dark, modern and an example of pure European cool.

When Boswell of Stanley looks around Jackson Square, he likes the direction things are going.

"It's exciting to see all this personality and substance," he said. "That's what the French Quarter is all about. That's what New Orleans is all about."